1. For the
benefit of the uninitiated, give me the one sentence description of the realm
of Dica.
A figment of my fevered imagination - a big figment, mind!
You didn’t really mean that, did you? No! Well, in the bare
bones: An immeasurably old castle kingdom, its walls encompassing a vast
sprawl of city and towns, of estates, parks, colleges and villages, ports, harbours,
farms and huge monumental works, and all spread upon and about an enormous coastal
mountain. OK, I know it’s a long sentence, but it is a big place -
think of a castle the size of Yorkshire!
2. “In
following the characters through Dica, you will feel you have travelled with
each of them.” When I’m writing, I have a hard time keeping just a
few characters and a couple of plotlines alive. Your writing is much, much more
intricate. What are the challenges of telling a multi-layered story? How do you
make individual characters stand out?
To be quite honest, I don’t have any problems handling loads
of characters, When I first started out writing, I must admit I shied away from
bringing too many people into the story, but I’ve since learnt that it’s
got little to do with me anyway. The story is what it is, with as many
characters as it needs to tell itself properly. The same with plot lines.
You see, I have a very visual mind, and so find little
difficulty holding it all there, like a well-travelled map. Just think of
all the folk you know, and all the plot lines that run through their intricate
lives. You’ve no problem holding all that in your head, now have
you? And that’s because they’re real people, with real lives,
doing real things. Well, it’s exactly the same with Dica. No,
honestly, it really is!
3. Seems
like every writer I know has an abandoned, half-finished manuscript stuck away
in a drawer or at the back of a closet (if not an actual manuscript, at least
an outline from some idea you’re fond of but just haven’t done
anything with it yet…) What about you? What is it? Do you think
you’ll ever finish it one day?
Leiyatel’s Embrace was that very manuscript, left to
moulder in the loft until unearthed during improvements a few years back, and
so yes, I suppose I have now finished it, kind of, after more than thirty years.
I’ve no other ideas as yet, nothing tangible, certainly nothing concrete.
I’m a firm believer, however, in the work principle, not in the
laggard’s hope of inspiration.
The Dica Series came from an initial ‘feel’ - which
I suppose was a kind of inspiration - but only grew into a proper, peopled
story once I’d begun digging around in its world. It’s like
everything, really: You get out what you put in, and I’ve dug
around in Dica an awful lot.
4. “The
King has lost his mind…” What are the challenges in writing a
character whose worldview is so unhinged? How do you walk the line between making a
character sympathetic versus making him or her unlikeable or unbelievable?
You can make any character ‘sympathetic’, but you
need to find all the subtleties and nuances that mark them out as real people,
with their own strengths and weaknesses, all bundled together in typically
chaotic human fashion. They don’t have to be likeable, as such, but
do need to have enough complexity and facets for the reader to find something
to latch on to, to have something they can recognise in themselves.
Every one of us is a hotchpotch of the good, the bad and the
indifferent, and this is what marks out any character as being believable.
I tried to bring out King Namweed’s confusion, peeping through the
bluster and comic pomposity the legacy of his own royal position brings.
His is a real madness, a frightening one, one born of a weakness
of mind we all run the risk of experiencing as we grow older. I tried to
bring out his isolation - due his elevated position - and offer this as the
reader’s way in to his character. Isolation is a strong fear in any
social animal, and so should be the easiest for us to sympathise with.
We mustn’t forget humour, of course. There are many
kinds, but most are based on fear, the juxtaposition of ridicule and relief,
relief that it’s not us! Again, I used this with Namweed, made him
into a rather sad figure, one who unknowingly comes over as ridiculous.
Most of us have some sympathy for the underdog, as though in gratitude for their
taking the role we fear most for ourselves.
5. “Sometimes,
when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the
written word is really just a fetish for stationary. The true writer, the born
writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus ticket, on
the wall of a cell.” (David Nicholls, One Day, 2010). Are you this kind
of a writer? Do you have a collection of notebooks and scraps of paper
(hopefully you have nothing written on a cell wall…)
I don’t think I ever wrote anything on the cell wall, not
that I remember, but that’s probably because it was always kept too dark,
and anyway, I’m not really a writer. I don’t aspire to being
an author, you see, or a novelist, but I do like language - any language - and I
do enjoy weaving yarns. I think, all told, I’ve probably only ever
noted down half a dozen phrases and only ever used half of them.
The serious answer is that I like to keep everything where I can
always find it, in my head. Then, when I’m writing, it’s
closest at hand. I work on the principle that if it stays in my mind then
it must be worth putting into a book.
6. On your
page on Amazon, the description says: “It's a slow tale about good people
trying to make sense of what is going on around them as their lives simply seem
to ebb away.” Where and how did you first come up with this writing idea?
How long did it take you to get the whole story on paper?
I started writing what was then ‘The Winds of
Change’ around 1979, and it wasn’t really a writing idea at
all. All I wanted to do was capture a place I’d so clearly seen, in
my own mind. It wasn’t so much a visualisation, but more a lucid
dream, one complete in all aspects down to the feel of the weather, the taste
of the air, and the sounds of birds flitting about dark stone roofs or within dank,
moss strewn yards. I knew Dica in all its richness well before pen ever
touched paper - and it really was pen and paper then! As to the story,
well, as I’ve already mentioned, I’d no real idea at the time if
there was one at all.
That immediacy, of the place I’d felt, meant I could easily
draw the reader into the story’s landscape, but that was about it.
Fortunately, there was a story hiding within it all, but it took more than
thirty years to come to light properly. There’s much to be said for
the passage of time, the perspective it slowly lends, and the subsequent
richness it can bring.
This may seem a little trite, or even flaky, but I truly
didn’t write any of it. I honestly only acted as scribe to some
other far more knowledgeable and skilful author. Whoever they are, and
however they managed to work through me, they had a hell of a job teaching me
how to ‘write proper’! I think they got somewhere in the end,
though, but that’s probably best left to the reader to judge.
7. Tell me
about your current work in progress (or pending release).
As you know, Jill, what I write finds itself shoehorned into the
fantasy genre, largely because of its setting. It’s actually mystery,
though, with a Science Fiction premise. It’s the mystery aspect
that means there’s little I can really divulge without risking giving
away too many spoilers.
My current work in progress is now with my beta/proof
reader. It’s the third in the Dica Series, and will soon be
published as ‘Last True World’. What I can say about it is
that it holds massive revelations, ones that tie together and answer most of
the mysteries introduced in ‘Leiyatel’s Embrace’ and
‘Of Weft and Weave’, the first two books.
My tales are intricate, as you’ve already noted.
They’re intricate because that’s the way of real life, and
Dica’s just as real as any other true world. I enjoyed writing the
series because it was the kind of work I love to read, the kind that
doesn’t ‘write down’ to the reader, that doesn’t
simplify in order to sell.
There’s a lot of richness in both previous volumes, and a
lot happening between them which, I saw from the reviews, needed taking
further. ‘Last True World’ is actually a product of my
readers, the further story that grew from their reviews and comments, and so
it’s to them that I’m almost wholly indebted.
8. Besides
warm fuzzies for the stories and praise for the writing, what do you hope
readers will think and feel while they read the Dica series? When they’re
finished?
I genuinely do hope that people first and foremost get pleasure
in the reading, that they enjoy my style of prose and the visual nature of it.
I know I’ve created a convincing world. I also know I’ve
populated it with believable people, despite their outlandish predicaments and
behaviour. What actually fascinates me, though, and therefore what
I’d love readers to find most engrossing, is the complex tale, and the
surprising twists and turns it takes.
I also enjoy creating innovative, novel and surprising incidents,
settings and plot devices, so I’d love the reader to be thrilled by those
too. Above all, though, I want to leave readers thinking. I want
ideas to have been sparked in their minds that give a totally different light
in which to view their own worlds.
9. There’s
a bit of a bias in this question… There are illustrations in your books,
drawn by none other than yourself. How do you think the book would have been received
without illustrations?
I don’t think it’s made much difference, in my
view. I may be wrong, but few people have made mention of the
illustrations. They were put in as a bonus, really, not as an essential
part of the tale. The few who have commented say they did add to the reading
experience, but to what extent I don’t know. They’re only in
‘Of Weft and Weave’, which is some way behind the take-up of ‘Leiyatel’s
Embrace’, so I may find more people commenting eventually.
It’s the same with the bits of verse all my books contain,
although they are strictly a part of the story - not grafted on gratuitously,
you understand. This also rarely gets a mention, but in this case the
verse is genuinely key to the tale.
10. What is the
best thing or most surprising thing about being an author?
Oh dear, I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that!
It would seem reasonable to assume that an author makes their living by writing
books, which I certainly don’t. I don’t feel like an
‘author’, I must say. Is there meant to be a point after
which you feel different? Start wearing cravats and smoking cigarettes in
long holders, or something?
11. The last
question is a bit of a freebie: What is the one thing you wish I had asked you,
but didn’t? Now go ahead and ask and answer it.
Your writing style is unusual, in this day and age, in being
quite slow paced. Why is this?
That’s certainly true of ‘Leiyatel’s
Embrace’, which starts out very leisurely, but it’s to match the
somnolent, ancient state of the realm of Dica. It’s all part of
what I mentioned earlier, that feel of the place that was my very own first
meeting with the realm.
Dica hasn’t changed substantially over hundreds of years,
and so it was important to set the pace accordingly, to ease the reader into
its almost stagnant atmosphere. This, I then felt, added contrast to the
later and culminating pace. I wanted it to be a bit like being on a
slippery slope, one where the gentle camber carries you unknowingly to a hidden
surprise.
‘Of Weft and Weave’ puts the reader in a parallel period,
but one of greater change, one where a slightly faster pace is appropriate.
It’s still not a breakneck speed, by any stretch of the imagination, but it
complements the broader reach of the story, its greater busyness and a range that
this time goes beyond the realm’s borders.
When ‘Last true World’ is available, readers might
be surprised by its far pacier narrative. It moves on from the period of
the first two books, and into a time of far faster change, and so my writing
style had to reflect that. I hope those who’ve enjoyed my slower
prose style aren’t too shocked, but please don’t blame me, as I
confessed earlier, I’m not really the author, but only his scribe.
Check out Clive's books on Amazon.
Follow Clive on Twitter: @Clive_SJohnson
